Lessons learned from an adolescent simulated patient educational program: Five years of experience.
BACKGROUND
The use of adolescents as standardized patients (SPs) in medical education has scarcely been reported. We evaluated the views of teachers, students and adolescent SPs with regard to the adolescent SP program in our under graduate curriculum and the changes that were made to the program in the past five years (from 2002-2003 until 2006-2007).


METHODS
Adolescent girls were recruited to portray roles of adolescents asking their general practitioner for an oral contraceptive.Students rated the quality of the adolescent SPs? role performance and feedback on a validated questionnaire (the MaSP). Both adolescent SPs and faculty teachers completed questionnaires on their experiences.


RESULTS
Over the past five years, 201 to 341 students gave the adolescent SPs? general performance a mean mark that varied from 7.5 to 8 out of 10. Generally, evaluations by teachers and adolescent SPs about the adolescent SP program were also very positive.The quality of the feedback by adolescent SPs has shown improvement over the past five years, although adolescents find it quite difficult to give feedback.


CONCLUSIONS
Teachers, students and adolescent SPs have highly valued the adolescent SP program over the past five years.The program has been changed on the basis of the lessons learned and has become mature.
Bokken
Lonneke
L
The university of Maastricht, The Netherlands. l.bokken@EDUC.unimaas.nl
Van Dalen
Jan
J
Scherpbier
Albert
A
Van Der Vleuten
Cees
C
Rethans
Jan-Joost
JJ
D000293:Adolescent; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000458:organization & administration; D005180:Faculty, Medical; D005246:Feedback; D006801:Humans; D016544:Patient Simulation; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires